


Just a Phonecall Away

by Patcho418



Series: There's a Garden... (Bees ficlets) [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Phantom pain, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, in which Blake can't find the words to say, in which Yang just wants to hear Blake's voice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 21:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17885510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patcho418/pseuds/Patcho418
Summary: (Based on a prompt by t-kaine on tumblr)'Over the years Blake and Yang suffer from phantom pains and usually they’re there to help each other through it, but occasionally one of them is away on a mission and all they can do is call each other and talk softly over the phone, trying to comfort their loved one through the pain.'





	Just a Phonecall Away

A bright light and persistent buzzing are what jolt Blake Belladonna awake that night.

She grumbles, turning over under the heavy, clean-smelling sheets towards the bedside table in her cabin room. She’d been asked to go to Menagerie to meet with her parents—some important business about the new White Fang they’d been keeping her updated on—but the long journey had already tired her out.

When she had left Patch, it was very reluctantly. For years she’d stuck completely by Yang’s side, promising that she’d stay, and although this was a business trip and Yang knew exactly where she was going and for how long, Blake still couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt whenever she saw the selfie of her and her girlfriend whenever she turned her phone on, or feel sadness and longing wash over her when she tried to reach beside her to hold Yang’s hand, only for her not to be beside her.

It had only been a few days, but Blake hadn’t felt lonelier since the last time she went to Menagerie. Despite texting Yang every day on the boat, calling her every evening before checking the Mistral/Menagerie news, and constantly flipping through her pictures on her scroll, she really just hoped that the trip wouldn’t take too long and she could go back to Yang soon.

The ship is said to be docking early tomorrow morning, and Blake—tired as she is—absolutely needs to rest before meeting with her family and Ilia tomorrow morning, so she turns her head over again and slides one of the pillows over her, forcing her eyes shut.

The buzzing of her scroll doesn’t stop, and the light persists through the pillow sheet, so she tosses it aside hopelessly and reaches lazily for the device vibrating incessantly against the wooden table. Squinting against the bright light washing over her tired face, she brings it to her ear, too tired to even register her caller’s name on the screen.

“Yeah?” she mutters tiredly, then awaits a response. Nothing. She grumbles and grips her phone tighter. “Hello?”

There’s a laboured sigh from the other end of the line. “Blake. Thank god.”

Immediately, Blake feels her heart race against her chest; maybe it’s the audio quality of her scroll, maybe she’s just tired, but Yang sounds weak, tired, raspy. She springs up quickly in her bed, already feeling her chest tighten and her skin grow numb.

“Yang? Are you okay?”

Another strenuous sigh. “I’m…it hurts.” Blake leans into her scroll attentively and is just barely able to pick out the soft strumming of a guitar against Yang’s heavy breathing. “Pretty bad, too.”

Blake shakes her head sadly. “Have you taken anything for it?”

“No,” she replies quickly, groaning against the sound of bedsheets shuffling. “Nothing really works super well, anyways, and it’s a lot worse right now.” There’s a grunt from Yang, strained and hoarse as if pain is all she can feel, all Blake can sense, and she winces against the screen.  
Yang quickly soothes herself into a quick, panicked breathing, and then there’s a silence that sends Blake’s heart racing and mind wandering. She inhales cautiously as if the sound of her breath is enough to cause Yang even more pain, as if silence is the only thing keeping Yang from screaming out once more in agony into her ear.

She knows the pain Yang is talking about; though not as intensely, she’d felt it before. On days where they’re simply lounging around the house, reading or watching tv, or on nights where Yang is preparing dinner and Blake setting the table. At inconvenient moments when they’re on missions, or helping Tai with exercises at Signal, and in still moments where there is nothing but them—until the agony tears at Yang and the tranquil intimacy of the moment is intruded upon by a past they’d long wished to put behind them.

Despite the soft music on the other end of the line, Blake only feels silence pressing against her ear as the cabin’s shadow squeezes around her. She presses her mouth to the device, hoping that despite the distance Yang can feel the soft brush of her lips. “What do you need?” She’s asked this plenty of times, she’s grown used to it, but she can never make it sound like anything other than a desperate plea for Yang to be okay.

The strenuous breathing on the other end stills, and Blake can almost hear the smile growing on Yang’s lips. “Just keep talking to me.”

Blake nods groggily, propping her pillow up behind her back and resting against it. Her eyes close slowly for a moment before quickly opening them again as they continue to adjust to the bright light beside her face. At first, her mind races as it tries to grasp Yang’s request: what does she want to talk about? What should she ask her? Should she bring up the pain, or act as if nothing is happening?

As if answering the barrage of questions in her own mind, Yang’s low voice cuts through the dense words, her sarcasm barely masking desperation. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Sorry!” Blake replies, clinging to the voice on the other end to ground her mind, to not find herself lost again in her own anxieties. She purses her lips, listening to the melody still hanging in the backdrop of the call. “This is that song Weiss wrote, right?” There’s hardly a response from Yang, just a slight hum that prompts Blake to keep talking. “I always found it super sweet.”

“Me too.”

Blake bites her lip; she’s already hit a dead end with this topic. As much as she loves the song, there’s only so much to really be said about it, and anything she might think of it Yang already knows. There are so few secrets between them, now. So little that either of them don’t know and understand about one-another. Talking to her girlfriend when she’s in pain shouldn’t be this hard, and yet somehow she finds every word that dares sit on her tongue, ready to be spoken, she swallows back hesitantly.

“Um…well, we’re docking in Menagerie tomorrow morning,” Blake continues, hoping that this topic won’t fall flat like the last. “My parents and I are going out for lunch when I show up, they keep on telling me that I’m gonna love this place Ilia introduced them to. Apparently it sells the world’s best sushi, but I think I’ll have to be the judge of that.” Then, with the faintest chuckle escaping her mouth: “Couldn’t be any worse than the sushi in Atlas, though.”

She hears a faint, raspy chuckle. “It wasn’t that bad, Blake.”

Blake scoffs. “You take that back, Yang Xiao Long!”

“Geez, Blake, I call you for comfort when I’m in agony and you attack me like that?”

Immediately, her heart sinks. She knows it shouldn’t, she knows this is Yang’s typical teasing, but despite this she can’t help but feel guilt rise in her chest and claw at her mind, the pain tangible in her own heart. Blake knows she doesn’t have to feel this way, doesn’t have to pull the weight of responsibility for something that was never her doing.

And yet she can’t shake the feeling. The feeling that Yang needs her right now, just to hear her voice, and she’s doing nothing to help make her feel any better.

Before the silence can betray Blake’s emotions, she exhales a low “sorry”, and before it can crush her with its imposing stillness, she hears the soft ruffling of bedsheets again; almost instinctively, she grabs her own blanket and brings it further up her cold body, drifting into its warmth.

“I love you, Blake.”

Her heart settles, and her eyelids no longer feel weighted. Settling further into her bed, she smiles calmly against the glass screen. “I love you too, Yang.”

“How much do you love me?”

And suddenly, there are no more words that escape her. No more mysteries to decipher, or hesitations that lead nowhere.

Everything she wants to say pours out of her mouth as if it were her breath, her soul, effortless and natural. She loves Yang. She loves her smile, equal parts gentle and beaming. She loves her hair, curling around her face like an impressive mane, she loves feeling the locks in between her own fingers, knowing that this is something only for her to touch, to feel, to experience. She loves the soft but fervent kisses on her forehead, her cheeks, her lips and neck and jaw in their most intimate moments, and she loves her voice in her ear, as soft at night as it is in the morning. She loves the way which Yang loves her friends, her family, how she stands tall before them but beside them is on equal ground. She loves her strength, her will, her fortitude when things grasp at her and try to pull her into the shadows, and how she burns so brilliantly the darkness fades from view.

She loves that Yang was the first—the only—person whose brilliance was enough to chase Blake’s shadows away. At every turn, in her darkest moments, there was only Yang, the sun itself under her burning skin and in her courageous eyes. There is so much that she loves about her, and for every sentiment she finds the words, husky from the sleep grating against her throat but assured, confident that every word must be said. That she cannot leave out a single syllable lest the love she feels for Yang doesn’t reach her.

Yang sighs in her ear, distance evaporated in an instant. “Blake…”

She sighs, smiles, and rests her face against the scroll as she lays back down, mouth still close. “Mhm?”

“Thank you.”

She can hear a sniffle coming from the woman, and she purses her lips, her mind eventually working its way back to the initial problem. “Is your arm okay now?”

Yang moans softly, pain apparent in her grumble. “Only a little bit.” Blake frowns slightly, worried for her partner, the pain in her own heart slowly creeping back from deep in her chest. “But it was way worse before I called.”

“Well,” Blake begins, curling under her blankets, resting softly against the gleaming image of her partner’s smile, “I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
